


I'll Hide My Trembling, Be What You Need

by Sukila



Series: The Messy Minds of Voltron's Paladins [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (and by that I mean), Alien Culture, Amnesia, Bilingual Character(s), Bilingual Shiro (Voltron), Blood, Character Study, Galra Empire, Gladiator Shiro (Voltron), Heavy Angst, Japanese Shiro (Voltron), Minor Violence, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Slavery, Songfic, Whoa actual dialogue in this one, alternate universe - minor canon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 05:22:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15089909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sukila/pseuds/Sukila
Summary: Shiro could see it all, a blank canvas coated in regrets and a foul odour as it carried across through everything he did. The ringing tone of a bothersome voice as it burned a mark in his head, then let it consume all it came across. Raging, it was raging, with nothing between him and that wave of destruction as it held him fast with every reminder and refused to cease.Or, in which Shiro reminisces on old memories of his time as a prisoner, and how they were obscured by his amnesia. Leaving dreams to tell him of the person he'd met who kept him sane, and the emotional trauma he dare not voice. Avoiding it as best he can to be the symbol for those who he leads, but wondering if what they'd tried to make him into will forever haunt him alongside the ghosts of the arena.





	I'll Hide My Trembling, Be What You Need

**Author's Note:**

> “Borderline” - Tove Styrke  
> The way you said "I love you." - "Before we jump."

_“Voice of the empire_

_They set my head on fire_

_Pull the plug, sire_

_I'll spit fire”_

 

Shiro could see it all, a blank canvas coated in regrets and a foul odour as it carried across through everything he did. The ringing tone of a bothersome voice as it burned a mark in his head, then let it consume all it came across. Raging, it was raging, with nothing between him and that wave of destruction as it held him fast with every reminder and refused to cease.

 

The low growls as the tone came again, swallowing him whole as it covered his whole body, coating him in a nothingness he couldn’t escape. It escalated, again and again, until the words he’d once used to describe it faded into the obscurity of the worsening bleeds. Because he was bleeding, wasn’t he? Droplets finding their way down his neck and leaving a trail of flakes on pale skin, steady and firm, refusing to relinquish their hold and be scrubbed away.

 

He’d screamed, then, tried to drown out the awful sound with his own as it ripped him apart and left nothing but faded echoes of his own voice; hoarse, broken, awaiting a chance to regrow that would never be long enough.

 

The memory, obscured and blurred by his own lack of understanding at the time, and the deep wanting to forget exactly what they’d done to him. He was dragged from the scraps by his own hands, covering his ears and giving off a stark contrast. One providing an uncomfortable heat as it lined with sweat, the other cold and burning all the same, the same feeling it gave to everyone, he assumed, that touched it.

 

_“Chance of the empire_

_Strangle my desire_

_Pull the plug, sire_

_And I'll spit fire”_

 

Pictures, pictures, neverending storybook days, melted together with acid and fused to the spine with whatever had spilled from the tank that day. They’d been trying something, hadn’t they? Something hardly comforting, with the consistency of syrup in the way it held him still, and the colour of amber, like he was a bug slowly being coated in sap and left to crystallise.

 

He’d say he was sorry, sometimes, and wonder what he’d done to warrant the cruel hands that dragged him from place to place. As if unable to decide if he had no will to move, or if he still had the gall to bolt down the hall anymore.

 

Matt had been there, once, a barely recognisable face in the shades of mauve he constantly endured, someone he’d pushed into a new mess altogether. He didn’t know what he’d felt at the time, practically viewing the memory from another’s perspective as it congealed with all the others and turned into mush.

 

_“I'm borderline happy and I'm borderline sad_

_I'm borderline good and I'm borderline bad_

_And I can't get rid of the tingling fear_

_You'd sort me out if my head gets clear”_

 

Burn, burn, a simmering heat whose steam burned the hands of the unthinking, the coffee split on the photographs they’d taken. A book in his hands, carefully kept hidden despite his inability to read the illegible scrawl of his most cherished person. Who’d pushed it into his hands without thinking the night he escaped to the stars, nothing to mark it as his own but his memory of that little book in his hands; Keith’s hands.

 

Keith… How long had it been since he’d seen him? Since he’d been there with him? He wasn’t sure, the dates didn’t translate and the person who had needed him was without. It had kept him saner, despite the guilt, to know someone was waiting, that someone would look for him.

 

The journal was their only connection now. He knew the worn pages well from all the days tracing them, trying to understand, to reach out; even before it had all gone wrong. It was all faded now, whiteness bordering nothingness that made him question again and again if what he knew was true. If the trembles he’d earned were worth the torture, if the amber liquid had changed him as they’d claimed; was he their weapon?

 

_“I live my life in shackles but I'm borderline free_

_I used to be blind and I still can't see_

_And I won't get ‘round to a change of mind_

_As long as nobody breaks my stride”_

 

Theirs. It. Unknowns. He’d heard the terms, felt the dehumanising effect of being claimed otherwise, of his name being thrown aside in favour of titles and prison numbers. Galran words caught by the translator and turned about in his head until they were still as much of a threat as he’d feared.

 

Sometimes, he’d mutter everything aloud, Japanese flitting around his cell in a careful reconstruction of those stained memories before they could leave him forever. He’d shake his hand to a makeshift beat of syllables, banging his head against the wall when his arm grew tired. They’d stop him, sometimes, mocking words in between vague threats when blood began to crust along his head. That was why he was bleeding, wasn’t it?

 

It didn’t matter, the arena would bring him back to bleeding anyway, it would break his mind even more as he witnessed old memories of his body moving on autopilot. The cheers letting him sob in peace under the weight of such volume, pretending to bask, but, instead, reviewing all the spilt blood in his mind, again and again.

 

A perfect picture he’d never be rid of, or, at least not when he wished he could.

 

_“Tricks of the empire_

_Make happy kids aim higher_

_Higher up they wet fire_

_Fools of the empire”_

 

It was almost funny, watching those cheering crowds, listening to the chatter in the halls when actual guards were posted,  and even listening in on the tired whispers of prisoners. They breathed in propaganda like it was all they had, praying for a better existence through obedience.

 

“Zarkon will…once I….”

 

He’d grown used to it after a while, unafraid of the lurking presence of the men because it was better than nothing, better than only constant footsteps in a single pattern. He’d even audibly laughed when they grew too ridiculous, with a few brushing him off as crazy...and others?

 

“You’re nothing but mindless fools, thinking your dictator will ever bring you happiness,” he’d told them, high on war crimes and the latest bloodbath.

 

Some scoff, some threaten, others refute with all they have to a _prisoner_ of all things.

 

But one...

 

_“I went to school in the empire_

_Learnt the rules from a brat, sire_

_I be a fool of the empire_

_'Til I break loose spread fire_

_Burn it down”_

 

“There is nothing more for us, you see,” the boy had said, sitting against the bars in a sort of solidarity, “I was raised as a slave until they found out I was a half-breed, I’m not much better off but-” His eyes grow dark, jaded, and empty as he turns back, the blue iris losing any previous sheen, “I learnt the hard way to take what I can get, _Champion.”_

 

“So, in the end, we’re all just the Empire’s slaves, huh? Kinda depressing.”

 

“At least we know, though, galra blood must make you dumber.” Neither seemed sure why, but that brought a smile to both their faces, “...I’m Zhis, a hybrid so…” He took a hand off his weapon to make a vague gesture to his face, _“This_ is kinda new…”

 

“I prefer Shiro...this whole _alien_ thing is new to me, but what did you mean by that?”

 

Zhis gestures to the markings on his face that trail up each cheek and mark the point of his nose, “See, this marks me as Puigan, but then I went through some kind of pseudo galra puberty and _bam!_ Suddenly I’m purple, fluffy, and getting taken under some captain’s wing…”

 

“Better than being in chains?” He asks, wincing through a shrug.

 

“I guess... But, I have to admit, swearing loyalty to your previous enslavor and pretending to be grateful all the time...isn’t easy,” he admits, pulling a face, “I should be grateful I could escape, I know, but now I’m just helping run this system…”

 

“Nothing wrong with that,” Shiro argues, “I have to fight...I don’t even know how often, I see other people’s blood so I can survive, that’s...not easy either…”

 

_“I'm borderline happy and I'm borderline sad_

_I'm borderline good and I'm borderline bad_

_And I can't get rid of the tingling fear_

_You'd sort me out if my head gets clear”_

 

A gunshot of energy slammed into the sentries tailing him, the hybrid who he’d recognise anywhere jumping to his aid, “Wha-? Zhis? I haven’t seen you in-! What are you doing?!”

 

“Go, Shiro!” He insisted, shoving him forwards before throwing himself into the wall to avoid the shots of the reinforcements, he clutched the injured arm, grimacing, “Get back to wherever you need to go, end the cycle for yourself!”

 

He still felt frozen, fear creeping up on his senses as the clanging sound grew and grew, memories coated with oil, fraying wires, and the slightest drip of what must have been blue blood, “What about you…?”

 

Zhis sent back a smile, looking completely at ease as he threw his gun aside and cut down tin soldiers, the unease barely visible in his hesitant, watery eyes, “Weren’t you listening? Do it for _you!_ You don’t have to fix this, Shiro.”

 

It contradicted Ulaz’s words that still rang in his ears, and painted the ending of his escape in a completely different colour. The memory coming to a close in slow motion, the ache of his head making the details vanish and barely register amongst helpless adrenaline.

 

He couldn’t help comparing Zhis to Keith when he saw the fire lit in fearful eyes, the comparison becoming even greater when he realised the hybrid had pressed Keith’s journal into palm.

 

_“I live my life in shackles but I'm borderline free_

_I used to be blind and I still can't see_

_And I won't get ‘round to a change of mind_

_As long as nobody breaks my stride”_

 

He snapped from the sheen of imprinted photos, practically tripping over his feet in an attempt to rip himself from the dream. Amber to pink to purple to red to blue to green. The shifting stains each leaving a lasting mark on drowned sheets of glossy pictures, as dated as printed memories now were.

 

A book, one painted with droplets of blood and sap, one he’d lost but hadn’t, looking back.

 

_“I'm borderline happy and I'm borderline sad_

_I'm borderline good and I'm borderline bad_

_And I can't get rid of tingling fear_

_You'd sort me out if my head gets clear”_

 

The team was there during shifts of memories; when sweat coated his senses in a telltale sign of unsureness. It was those memories that made him fear his own demise, or even worse, the loss of his mind to the demons lurking in his mind, ready to recall the battles he’d fought, and had covered him in twenty different shades of blood. He became afraid of it thanks to most of it slipping away, had told Keith, the one he was certain was more stable, to take his place if he fell into it.

 

Because then he wouldn’t have to keep going for everyone else, too.

 

It was a mistake, one he’d seen when their bond had grown strained, the love (in what context he still wasn’t sure) faltering and falling due to fear.

 

The same one he’d later made in trying to keep each member on track, but never taking the measures he should’ve. Because he was the adult, the mature one, the best at every exercise, but what was he if not a person to both look up to and _teach?_

 

He was still waiting for someone to save him when he could barely put himself together, meanwhile those looking for reassurance, guidance, sympathy, kindness, solidarity, or love, were put on the wayside thanks to his listless state of soldiering on.

 

_“I live my life in shackles but I'm borderline free_

_I used to be blind and I still can't see_

_And I won't get around to a change of mind_

_As long as nobody breaks my stride”_

 

‘You don’t have to fix everything, Shiro.’ Zhis had told him, having seen a vicious cycle from either side of conquest, trying to tell him to run away, be selfish, and never come back.

 

Maybe he could’ve done it if he’d had no one left, but now he had so many to care for, who watched his back despite only one really knowing what he was looking for. Still, he leaned on them and hid it behind an effort to bond; sleeping through nightmares because he knew he had to rest; living with the pain because they had a war to fight.

 

He was free, but still clapped in irons at each opportunity, haunted by both ghosts and the living as they sported yellow eyes and a mauve hue. And only on some occasions could he brush aside that fear for the sake of actions rather than trauma, only for people like Ulaz, Zhis...and, now, Keith…

 

He’d watch as Allura begrudged each and every galra they met; held them accountable for nonexistent war crimes as she spat hatred back at them. He didn’t stop her, not even when he saw the discomfort, because he was too busy clutching his false arm and seeing the cheering spectators again and again.

 

Shiro’s selfish moments, he’d dubbed them, when colours ruled his mind and stained his experiences with cruel reminders of scents and sadness. It was when he’d wait for someone to break it, to dig into his head a little and rescue him from the all encompassing fear that struck him again and again, _again and again._

 

He wanted to reach out, to bring forth his shortcomings and improve their unity with mutual understanding. Keyword: _wanted._ Because he was a leader, a figure for both humans and galra alike. He was calm, collected, even confident, following his morals and stepping on eggshells to shutdown less ideal options. They’d listen if he told them, but their confidence may be rattled, a chance he just couldn’t take, even avoiding the friend he’d left behind in favour of being that symbol of a person.

  
So he could forget, avoid the tainted past he’d forged for himself, and just keep going. After all, he _was_ made to be a weapon, even if becoming one had to be his greatest fear.


End file.
